


the hurts of human life

by actonbell



Series: Avengers, Assembled [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Food, Gen, Juggling, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 22:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6257821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actonbell/pseuds/actonbell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, well, you know," Steve tried, but Clint tilted his head, still keeping Steve's eye, and said, direct as Sam that day by the reflecting pool, "You don't know how to handle it, do you?"</p><p>"Excuse me?" Steve said, only out of the pure reflex politeness Sarah Rogers had bred into him before he was six years old.</p><p>"Grief." Clint's look was unsparing, merciless, but held no judgement, either. "The loss. The pain, the anger...." He waited, but Steve couldn't say anything any more than he could look away. "So you tried to make a deal. Dedicate your life to what's left, do what you can do. Strike a bargain that would make it all go away -- only you can't. It won't. And it never will."</p><p>Steve's throat was dry, so he took a long drink of water, and then another one, trying to think of something to say that wasn't <em>How do you know?</em> or <em>No I'm fine thanks</em> or even just <em>Fuck you,</em> but when he looked back up, Clint was actually smiling, a little. "Or you can tell me I'm wrong."</p>
            </blockquote>





	the hurts of human life

_The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life._ \- Helen Macdonald

 

Steve knew hours before the scheduled visit that it was a bad idea, and it just kept getting even worse whenever he dared to think about it, like a child quickly glancing into the dark maw of an open bedroom closet after waking up from a nightmare for reassurance and getting more scared instead. As the time grew shorter he couldn't stop himself from hovering, fussing; he rearranged the appetizers on the plates, he worried that Natasha would laugh at his choice of caviar, he wondered if he should suggest a movie so nobody would have to talk. And that was all surface cover, churned-up foam from the real anxieties down below -- not that he thought Bucky would _hurt_ Tasha or Clint but instead, the idea of what a setback could do....Bucky watched him sardonically for about five minutes and then said "It's not like I'm your ma's Staffordshire, Steve, I won't fucking _break"_ and stomped off to the bedroom. It was impossible for Steve not to remember that he'd said that line about Sarah's precious heirloom china to Bucky maybe a hundred times before the war, complete with childish stomping, and for a minute a weird kind of vertigo gripped him, like he wasn't out of time, like everyone said, but trapped in layers of it, everything echoing. He had to sit down, the big cushions on the sofa still holding ghost-warmth from Bucky's body being there a few minutes earlier.

 _What the hell am I doing?_ he thought, for maybe the tenth time that day, and didn't try to push the doubt away to the furthest corner of his mind or overwhelm it with that faith everyone supposed he could summon up on command, bright and unquestioning. It was true the _purpose_ of his days, in larger and smaller forms, but always the same -- _find Bucky. Get Bucky somewhere safe. Get Bucky outside once during the day. Get Bucky to eat regularly_ \-- had been unwavering since that day he'd pulled the mask off during that first fight and it had been almost like the first moments after the serum, when he'd been able to breathe to the bottom of his lungs, feel his body without pain, see the world clear and sharp. But the old questions were still always there: _What am I doing? What can I do?_ His mental habit was always to set that aside the way his mother'd taught him to clear the table when he was barely old enough to reach it, look for the next thing that needed doing that he could do, but for now he sat still for a moment, like a puppet with its strings cut, feeling uncertain of nearly everything.

 _Maybe Bucky's not the one everyone should be worrying about,_ he thought grimly, then had to laugh because Tasha had said something like that to him early, early on, before anyone else would even think it. That got him to his feet again and he was wet-combing his hair in the bathroom when Bucky shouldered the half-closed door open and said, "Let someone else in for five minutes, Victor Mature -- "

"Just because I told you I met him _once_ at the -- "

"You just got that same holy look," Bucky said, stealing Steve's comb so Steve would mock-glare. He did, to see Bucky laugh. "Yeah, that one." The intercom buzzer went off, and Steve flinched; Bucky watched him, right eyebrow cocked up in that way that made both time and Steve's breath stop. "It'll be all right on the night," he said, and gave Steve that same over-the-top mock salute he had in the middle of the fake glowing Expo future, before the war had taken him away.

"It _is_ the night," Steve muttered to Bucky's retreating back, then thumbed the talk button to say "Come on up" against most of his better instincts.

"Is it all right if I let these pizza delivery guys dressed in black with octopus markings on their helmets in too?" demanded Clint's voice, loud and brassy even over the cheap two-way. "They said you ordered extra chloral hydrate on top."

 

Steve had actually seen a hawk close up, once, not in a Brooklyn zoo or while shivering and dirty in a nameless French forest somewhere, but right after he'd moved to DC. His old condo had had a rat problem in the garbage bins for a while, bad enough the management kept leaving plaintive-to-pissy notices on everyone's doors about the importance of using plastic bags and tying them _tightly_ closed. While Steve lived too high up to be bothered by the infestation, he'd seen them running around in the parking lot, sleek and fat, fur shining in the sun, and remembered seeing their doubles scrambling in the alley behind the bakery on his way to pick up a day-old loaf. The mental double exposure between his yuppified present-day surroundings and pre-war New York had been odd enough he'd zoned out for....how long he couldn't tell, but when he refocused, his cup of coffee had gone cold and there was a fucking _hawk_ sitting on his balcony railing. It was so close he could see the black hooked tip of its yellow beak, its fearsome curved talons the same black, standing out against its yellow feet. He'd sat there with his mouth open, like a kid, sure it could see him -- its head was turned to the side, and it kept periodically twitching, always scanning, like a sniper or lookout -- not moving, barely breathing. The balcony door was open, and it couldn't have been more than ten feet away. Steve just kept looking, at the fluffy chest feathers, the downy fuzz around its legs, the sharply angled tail like a blade. He didn't dare go for his camera, or the little Starkphone on the coffee table in front of him, he only hoped he could store up the true impressions of what it looked like and try to draw them later.

Then the hawk had really looked at him, not taken him in as a part of the environment, like the balcony railing or door or the angle of the roof above but _seen_ him, and Steve's breath had stopped. He didn't know if it was some primitive reflex going back to when humankind's ancestors were mammalian creatures with footbones the size of a rice grain (Tony had gone on at him about evolutionary biology for a while before realizing it didn't bother Steve and tossing that topic aside, like a broken toy) but it seemed darker, deeper. Maybe it was the effect of its automatic division of living things into predator/prey, opponent/food, but the hawk's eye held him, fearless, no human doubt or hesitation in it. It was a look from a being whose identity was so sure, so one with its purpose, that its gaze had never gone within, asking _Who am I?_ but instead was always external, always a challenge: _Who are_ you?

The hawk had dropped off the balcony with no warning, Steve had blinked, and a few seconds later he'd heard a sharp little shriek from the parking lot stories below that cut out mercifully quick. Some memory of kids droning memorized poems in a classroom decades ago bobbed up, _Nature red in tooth and claw_ (his own had been _The boy stood on the burning deck)_ and because he had absolutely nothing to do and was annoyed at himself for feeling a little bereft, he grabbed Tony's gadget and looked it up. He'd wasted a couple of hours scrolling through the (fucking _endless)_ poem it was actually snipped from, not understanding most of it, understanding some parts almost against his will _(But half my life I leave behind....)._ He gave up on the poem because it felt too strange not comprehending its argument while recognizing the feelings behind it -- emptiness, depression, enormous resistance to despair, buried anger, fear. And the poem felt all wrong when he thought about the fierce, passionless hawk's eye. A hawk going after a rat looked like war to someone who had never been in one -- what he remembered most about the war was Schmidt's crazy bloodlust, Zola's insane determination to torture human beings on lab tables to see how much he could make them suffer. They were what, and why, he had fought. The hawk killed only what it needed to eat, and could not torture.

If Sam was the flight, pure free grace, Clint was the stare. That was why, when he wondered what the hell he was doing, he tried to trust Tasha, who trusted Clint -- hell, Clint had been the one who'd brought her in, and he knew without her, probably Bucky would never -- no, he couldn't bear to form that thought. Clint went where Tasha did, calling himself her dog, so in a way it was natural for him to be the first guest (Steve couldn't think of Sam as a guest, and he thought Bucky couldn't call Tasha one, either). But the way everyone had reacted, Tasha or no Tasha, gave him pause. Sam had asked if Steve wouldn't prefer to jab Bucky with sharp sticks for half an hour or so -- _oh wait, Barton does have those, now doesn't he?_ More than one person had advised Steve to hide any small valuables. Even if people were polite, the tone in which they'd said that one word _"Barton?"_ had revealed enough. Steve thought Clint probably would've loved it; it was the view of him he wanted people to have, after all.

But there was something else, buried deep and sharp under the bluster, glinting like a blade. Steve had seen Clint flick it out during that -- inquest, inquisition, blame game, whatever the fuck it was, back in New York, when he'd cut through all the bureaucracy to the bone. _If you want to talk about sacrifice...._ But then Clint had used that same edge on Steve, too; he just hadn't done it in front of everybody.

[After Clint had swiped his drawings,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6249838) when Steve had accepted his invitation to dinner with Tasha, she'd excused herself right after they'd all ordered. Steve had momentarily frozen, caught between his old resentful shyness and the too-hearty stage manner, and when he'd finally looked up from his empty plate to apologize for being bad company, Clint had pinned him with that gaze.

"Talia doesn't think you're doing so hot," Clint said flatly, and before Steve could think up a joking rebuff about whether or not Clint had sisters or something, he went right on: "Neither do I."

"Oh, well, you know," Steve tried, but Clint tilted his head, still keeping Steve's eye, and said, direct as Sam that day by the reflecting pool, "You don't know how to handle it, do you?"

"Excuse me?" Steve said, out of the pure reflex politeness Sarah Rogers had bred into him before he was six years old.

"Grief." Clint's look was unsparing, merciless, but held no judgement, either. "The loss. The pain, the anger...." He waited, but Steve couldn't say anything any more than he could look away. "So you tried to make a deal. Dedicate your life to what's left, do what you can do. Strike a bargain that would make it all go away -- only you can't. It won't. And it never will."

Steve's throat was dry, so he took a long drink of water, and then another one, trying to think of something to say that wasn't _How do you know?_ or _No I'm fine thanks_ or even just _Fuck you,_ but when he looked back up, Clint was actually smiling, a little. "Or you can tell me I'm wrong."

"You know you're not wrong," Steve muttered, and gulped the rest of his water. The waiter had appeared at his elbow so fast to refill his glass that he'd started, and then Natasha came back to the table, and the moment when Clint had seen straight through Steve (not that it was _fucking hard,_ apparently, or ever had been, for anyone) was covered over with little drifts of polite chit-chat. Natasha told him about the first time she'd met Hill ("We were both petrified, so of course we both acted really pissed"), Clint cracked them up with imitations of Fury and Tony and Pierce, Steve trotted out a few of his old showbiz anecdotes and Clint, to his delight, responded in kind ("You were in the _circus?"_ "It's not as great as it sounds....okay, except for this one time"). The dinner passed easily enough, and after the waiter had cleared and gotten Steve to sign a fresh linen napkin the owner could frame and display in the lobby, Clint stood up and said, "I gotta pollute my lungs and shorten my lifespan. 'Scuse me," and slipped out to the door, his button-down and sports jacket concealing his archer's muscles but unable to hide the uncanny precision in his movements, a predator's unsettling grace.

"So did you put him up to that?" Steve asked Natasha wryly. She laughed.

"Nobody has to put Clint up to anything....but no. Whatever he said, that was all him. One hundred percent unadulterated Barton. You can't say _pure_ Barton -- "

"No," Steve agreed. He considered what Clint called "that old razzle-dazzle" mixed up in a weird way with a kind of jaunty....nihilism? Absurdity? It reminded him a little of one of the authors who'd been on everyone's postwar book lists. "He seems sort of....Russian," he suggested. "Like that cockroach story?"

"Kafka's Czech," Natasha told him, "but he wrote in German. Clint _is_ quite Russian," she went on in an approving tone, which surprised Steve a little. "But in an American way."

"He's pretty goddamn American, yeah. From _Iowa -- "_

"Says Captain Apple Pie."

"I don't _like -- "_

"And apple pie for dessert?" the waiter asked, reappearing in that choreographed way that seemed to happen only around Natasha, as if all the world participated in her particular kind of theatre. "Mr. Barton did say it was your favourite."

Steve didn't know why he found that memory reassuring -- probably anyone in any other kind of life would have felt the opposite way -- but he held onto it a little bit, like one of the talismans he'd seen other men finger during the war. (His mother had left him her St Christopher's medal, but he was too afraid of losing it to wear it in combat. Suddenly he wondered where it was -- that goddamn Smithsonian exhibit, probably. They had everything but his underwear; they had one of his _baby teeth.)_ Coulson had brought in Clint, Clint had brought in Natasha, Natasha had convinced Bucky to stop chasing around the world and blowing remnants of HYDRA up, had brought him back to Steve. That was a chain of goodness Steve could believe in, rely on. Trust.

"Okay," he said aloud, mostly to himself, and wiped his hands down the side of his pants as he heard footsteps in the hall, readying himself to open the door.

 

Back when he was little, sometimes when he'd gotten upset it was like everything became blurry. (This also happened because back then, a pair of glasses was not only expensive and fragile, but if they'd belonged to him, they got broken almost immediately, and although Bucky did his best to fix them and his mother had made him wear them -- nobody else could -- they still gave him headaches, so he ditched them often as possible.) But the serum brought colour and focus, and also a kind of attention to detail he couldn't shut off. He'd had a good visual memory before, but afterwards seeing was almost another tactile sense, like touching and smelling and tasting. Bucky had helped him learn how to use it, during the tail end of the war, and it had saved his life before the attack in the elevator when their intentions were all as plain as if they'd walked up and told him out loud. But it meant that when he was nervous about meeting people (or, be honest, about _Bucky_ meeting people) what he noticed made him more nervous and the nerves made the focus kick into even higher gear. Then he wished he could have a drink -- just one, to dull the edge, really -- but the serum had changed that, too. Then again, if he and Bucky could get drunk, they'd never have been able to stop, so it all came out in the wash, as Sarah Rogers used to say. He turned the knob.

"Hey, aren't you gonna be careful and look through the spyhole?" Clint called.

 _"No,"_ Steve said, laughing -- Barton had gotten him that way before. He tried to relax, bent down to hug Tasha and kiss her on the cheek, shook Clint's hand, took their coats, trying not to be too stiff. _Just take it easy,_ Sam had said, with that hot sweet smile. _Nice and slow. You_ can _do slow, right? -- Learned it from you,_ Steve had teased back, and the memory was good enough to usher them down the hallway to where Bucky was waiting -- the opposite of a dramatic entrance, maybe, but Steve knew close quarters and more than one body would always be a bad combination. What finally had convinced him to stay out of the narrow hall was Steve suggesting this way he could play the disapproving father. "Don't tell _me_ you can't remember all the ones you met, back in the day."

Bucky was doing a credible impersonation of Mr Adams, the barkeeper Steve's father had known before the first War (Bucky had dated two of his daughters, Maggie and Francie, but not, as neighbourhood legend had it, at the same time). He stood with his weight balanced, feet slightly apart, arms crossed like a barrier, head tilted, appraising, not menacing but poised for potential trouble. The only thing missing was a dirty apron; Bucky, like Tasha, was dressed casually, in skinny black jeans (his appeared to be tighter than hers), soft layered shirts, and the inevitable hoodie (Tasha's was a light caramel and begged you to touch it with how soft it looked. Steve guessed it was cashmere). Steve snorted, and Bucky broke out of the role, grinning briefly at him. Clint, who was taking in the spread, appeared to have missed it, but Steve doubted that.

Bucky kissed Tasha, but in the way Steve remembered from Europe, _faire la bise,_ Peggy had showed him how....Bucky brought Tasha's hand up to his mouth and kissed it, too, looking in her eyes the entire time, which Steve thought was overdoing it. "I'm not kissing you," Barton said. It was impossible for Steve not to remember the last time Phillips had said that to him, which had _also_ been the last time Peggy had kissed him, and the distress must have been written on his face because Bucky quit messing around. He came right up to them, took one of the bottles of wine Barton was holding so they could shake hands, said _Hello_ and _I'll just open these in the kitchen, let them breathe_ and _Steve fussed over that damn caviar all day, tell him you like it_ while keeping Steve in the corner of his vision with quick glances. They locked eyes. Then Bucky turned very deliberately and went off to the kitchen, not looking back, like it really was an ordinary get-together, a little routine, nicely comforting, no surprises.

Natasha sat down. "Steve," she said. "It's okay. It's not even a party."

Clint pointed at Steve. "This ain't no party, this ain't no disco...." he half-chanted. Steve resisted the urge to take out his notebook and jot the lines down, because whenever Clint saw him do that he started making references that weren't exactly made up but had very little correspondence to actual reality. Steve had finally given up after one bad internet session spent on the supposedly interlocking theories of the Time Cube, Philip K. Dick's later novels, and Dr. Bronner.

"Steve, are you _all right?"_ Bucky asked, coming back, in such exaggerated doleful tones Steve had to laugh, and reach out to mock-slap at the back of his head. "I promise to behave, I got my shots and everything," Barton said. _"Does_ he ever behave?" Steve asked Natasha. She shrugged. "Badly, yes." Then they were all settled, Steve and Bucky on the couch, Natasha on a huge comfortable armchair which made her look even smaller, across from them, the coffee table in between filled with small plates, bowls, glasses, silverware and trays of food. Clint perched on the arm of her chair, one leg propped on the floor taking most of his weight. Steve wondered if he'd ever seen Clint sit straight in any chair; he didn't think so.

Clint's eyes dropped to Bucky's arm, but he wasn't either wincing in pained horror or staring transfixed at its awful beauty, like most people. Almost to himself, he said, "I wonder what the hell your draw weight would be."

Steve tried to keep his mouth from dropping open and gritted his teeth instead. Tasha smiled beatifically at him and leaned forward to scoop up caviar with a delicate mother-of-pearl flat spoon. Bucky's face was neutral, opaque as Tasha's could get.

Clint bared his teeth at Bucky, a big chimp's grin. "Heard a lot about you," he said cheerfully. Steve shot Tasha an incredulous look, but she was occupied with the herring salad with boiled beets smothered in real mayonnaise, while eyeing the sauerkraut and small oily sprats. The shashlik, pirogis and dumplings were still in the kitchen. He wondered if he'd be eating them all for lunch tomorrow by himself, if this kept up.

Bucky said "Everyone has," so glibly Steve had to hide in a cough. Clint's grin got bigger, like visible laughter. "Heard _you_ can shoot."

Clint shrugged fake-modestly. "Oh, a little bit. Not like you, though."

Bucky's answering grin was equally dangerous. "Probably not like me, no."

"Stark's got a range," Clint offered. He dropped his gaze and leaned forward to grab some deviled eggs, holding them with surprising delicacy.

"Stark's got everything." Steve felt himself tense at the slight bitterness in Bucky's tone, the knowledge that two _floors_ were waiting for them both in Xanadu, the feeling Stark would never be happy until he had the complete set. He tried to focus on the weird conversation, see where the hell it was going, what it might set off.

Clint snapped several deviled eggs down in one bite, like a dog. "Not quite," he said, wiping his mouth with his hand. "He wanted _something,_ but we got it first...." He looked at Natasha, who rolled her eyes.

"Not now. Later."

"Aw Natasha, no," Clint whined, sounding exactly like a little kid, which was all the more incongruous coming from a guy with arms that big. Steve smiled, then looked over at Bucky immediately to check his reaction, like always -- he knew it annoyed Bucky, but it was hard to stop. Bucky was watching Clint and Natasha with a strange expression, almost sour; not jealousy or envy, exactly, but Steve had seen it before when he joked around with Tony on the phone sometimes. He thought maybe Bucky was remembering when _he_ used to crack wise, how he used to be able to ease social tension (and didn't it say something about how fucked-up their lives were now that this job was somehow being done by _Clint Barton)_. Steve had been taken aback by how Clint had eased into their little....group, he guessed it was now, of him and Bucky and Sam and Natasha. He knew part of that was because of Clint's childhood, but another part of it was how Clint did remind him a little bit of Bucky, before the fall; before Azzano. It wasn't that they were both sharpshooters or trained observers or fond of terrible jokes, but more that the glib surface humour covered a private self that was dead serious, even sardonic. Bucky's amused nihilism had come to the fore after the torture and the lab table (and who could fucking blame him? not Steve, not ever). Sometimes seeing Clint make Tasha laugh made Steve remember Bucky and Peggy in a strange disorienting way, like referred pain.

And at that precise moment, as Natasha was studiously ignoring (when at the same time she was probably memorizing) the emotional currents in the room and focusing on the food, spooning caviar up to her parted lips again, Clint leaned forward and said perfectly seriously: "Do you think that jam's okay, Cap? It smells like fish."

Bucky said something fast and low in Russian to Natasha -- Steve still couldn't follow when they spoke just to each other, it was like hearing voices in a dream, on the very edge of understanding. He looked questioningly at Natasha, who picked up her glass and drank to avoid answering.

"That's right," Clint said, surprising Steve. He didn't know quite how, but Clint had caught the phrase like a knife. "'Fucking clown,' that's me. All the world loves a clown. Unless you're Stephen King. He's grim all day, _and_ all night."

They all blankly looked at him, even Tasha. Clint sighed.

"Do I have to feed you mopes all the lines? _It's his poor wife I feel sorry for,_ that's the next one."

Steve felt his face change as the jokes clicked into place in his mind, recognition like a physical reaction. He said, a little slowly, "How long were you in the war? About five foot ten."

Natasha rolled her eyes again, but Clint grinned -- not the chimp grin or the shark grin, but a real smile without sharp edges.

"At the station they showed me a picture of Hitler and said 'Here is your enemy.' I looked in every compartment but he wasn't on the train."

"Spike Milligan," Steve said.

"Bob Hope."

Bucky stirred next to Steve. "Not that awful show you and Carter used to listen to...." For once, Steve was the one who looked blank. Bucky gestured, like he was irritably pulling at something just out of reach. "'This is Funf speaking,'" he said in a terrible fake German accent, then made a face at his own effort, but Steve felt a pure shock of delight.

"After you, Claude -- "

"No, after _you,_ Cecil."

Clint sat beaming, as if he were a kid watching the best cartoon ever, but Natasha was clearly out of her depth -- something Steve hadn't seen often. Barton must be going off even her script, which usually covered every possible eventuality including alien invasions. Steve had seen her floundering before only twice, never over anything social. "You, uh, speak Russian?" he asked Clint hastily.

"I'm a man of the world. I speak everything. I know how to say 'Pluck yew' in eight languages."

Bucky snorted loudly, a deep annoyed sound that reminded Steve of when they'd gone to the lion's house at the opening of Prospect Park Zoo. Since the table of food really was beginning to have that picked-over look appetizers got when they sat out too long, a sight familiar from dozens of wartime banquets, he said "Oh hey, pirogis!" and escaped to the kitchen. He was debating whether or not to bring out two trays at once or make two trips when he heard Clint's voice, uncharacteristically indistinct, and Natasha answering in a sharper tone, and he hurried back out with one tray and Clint's second bottle of wine in the other hand. Bucky was hunched forward on the couch, no longer lazily slouching, and as Clint's voice rose in amazement, "You didn't _tell_ him, did you?" he and Natasha both broke in: "No, how could -- " "Of course not, what --"

"Tell me what?" Steve said cheerfully, clearing space on the coffee table, unloading dishes full of steaming pastries and meat and collecting empty ones to stack on his tray.

He looked up in the silence. Bucky and Natasha were both staring down, away, anywhere but at him. "What is it?" he asked again, beginning to feel the familiar clutch of anxiety in his chest. "Buck...." He trailed off. What in God's name would they feel unable to tell him, after everything they'd all gone through?

"Say, you realize you're the only one here who hasn't been brainwashed?" Clint asked him sunnily.

Steve stared. He'd spent enough time around Barton by now to know this was how he operated, this was the effect he _wanted,_ but he could feel his eyes widen and brain short out anyway. "I.... _what?"_ He held onto the tray tightly.

"Ever get that not-so-fresh feeling?" Clint winked.

"Uh," Steve said in horror and fled back to the kitchen. As he rinsed the dirty plates and slowly arranged small platters of sausages and black bread with salt he could hear Clint more clearly now, going on -- something about Polish caviar and dry-cleaning. He briefly contemplated climbing out the kitchen window onto the balcony and plunging down into the safe, dark, Barton-free DC streets, but wasn't sure who would hurt him worse when they caught up with him, Bucky or Natasha.

They ate in grim silence for a while, with no conversation other than practicalities like "Pass the sour cream, please?" or "More wine, Nat?" but the food was too good to spoil with bad feeling, and after Bucky insisted on splitting his golubtsy with Steve, who traded his mushroom noodle soup for Clint's borscht, they all began sharing more freely, not eating off each others' plates but passing around dishes, scraping the last bits of onion and pork off the skewers, Natasha demanding everyone else's kotlety, butting up against Steve like a cat to steal the last of it. Even Steve and Bucky were both full. They all sat back, had a little more wine, asked Steve to open a window, then another one. "Where the hell did you find this stuff in DC?" Clint demanded. "And do they do pizza?"

"Sam helped me find it," Steve confessed. "It's not a restaurant -- more like a private kitchen, kind of a small catering business, but they don't advertise. Nat wanted real Russian food," he explained.

"Did she," Bucky said, but without sharpness, draped over the end of the sofa, eyes half-closed. Steve felt an almost physical pain in his chest, watching him sprawl; he hadn't seemed this relaxed since before the war. Natasha was at the other end, curled up in a tight ball -- Steve almost expected to see a tail wrapped around her toes. She smiled lazily at Bucky. "Hunh....Well, if that wasn't the real thing, I couldn't tell," he said, but still without bite.

"We'll take you to Brighton Beach, when we go back to New York," Natasha told Steve. "Maybe Glechik?" She grinned. "There's a show at Tatiana's...."

Even when he was relaxed, like now, Clint's hands were always moving, not so much occupied as in use, like a pianist or a ballplayer stretching, keeping supple. It was focused motion, not fidgeting: when they watched sports he spun bottletops and walked them across his knuckles like they were coins, twirled Steve's best art pens as if they were drumsticks, folded and unfolded scraps of paper in little repetitive intricate patterns. Steve had seen him juggle anything, anywhere -- in meetings, on assignments, on the Bus, with pens, paper cups, heavy-duty field water canteens, crumpled candy wrappers, all at once. Steve still remembered the first time he had seen how it made the Black freaking Widow _giggle,_ like a little girl, a sweet musical absolutely incongruous sound. It was maybe the only part left of whatever actual childhood she'd had, absolutely unchanged, and Steve had found it impossible not to stare. Even Banner had outright gaped.

Clint was idly flicking one of the caviar spoons against the edge of a plate, maybe for the sound, and then he raised it up and down a few times, as if it were a lever, and then Steve could have sworn the damn thing slipped up into the air -- he knew it was a trick, Clint had _showed_ him how it was a trick, and his eyes still got tricked anyway. ("Human nature," Clint had said sympathetically.) The spoon leaped around like a fish, darting this way and that, always returning to Clint's finger and thumb; it was like watching a cat playing with a ball. Steve glanced over at Bucky, to see if he was still jealous.

Steve had forgotten that although he'd heard Natasha laugh like that before -- not often, and he wouldn't say you could get _used_ to the sound, but at least for him it wasn't a surprise -- Bucky hadn't. He had gone dramatically pale, which made his eyes a stormy dark blue, like when Steve had found him sweaty and gasping on Zola's table. Steve was opening his mouth to say something, _Jesus Buck are you all right,_ and Natasha's glance was turning to him, when Steve's attention snapped back to Clint because he somehow had picked up one of Bucky's big, jagged _knives_ that were stashed all over the apartment. Usually there was at least one (sheathed) out within reach, but Bucky had tidied up a bit in deference to having guests, even if they were known assassins and already acquainted.

Clint held the knife, which looked as compact and dangerous as any gun, balanced easily in one hand, still flipping the little mother-of-pearl tasting spoon up and down with the other. Bucky was now glaring instead of looking like he'd been sucker punched in the gut, which didn't seem like an improvement.

Steve opened his mouth but Clint flicked his wrist and the knife started flipping up and down, too, not in the same rhythm as the spoon, and then it was fucking _bouncing_ up and down like someone was yanking it on a string and Tasha was giggling again. Bucky was outright scowling, instead of just glaring, and then for the first time in months Steve forgot to pay attention to Bucky because Clint had unsheathed the knife and started tossing the sheath _and_ the knife way up and down, and then they were circling in the familiar rhythm, Clint barely moving his hands, and an empty coffee cup joined them, and then a stray penny that was next to the cup, and a balled-up napkin. Steve knew he was showing off for the rubes, everything orbiting Clint's sure hands as he threw all of it fast and high, while Tasha kept laughing as if someone was tickling her, she couldn't control it.

Clint winked again at Steve and said, "You have to excuse her, she never had a clown at birthday parties....wait, never had any birthday parties either, terribly deprived, those Red Room birthdays."

In reaction, so fast Steve couldn't see it start out of the corner of his eye, let alone stop it, Bucky pulled a throwing knife out of the concealed sheath on his boot (at least he wasn't wearing the ankle holsters anymore) and tossed it at Clint. Steve felt that weird jacked-up adrenaline rush again, like everything was under a magnifying glass, a pure combat modification that was doubly disorienting to feel in a nice if nondescript living room. Tasha's hand was on his arm, gentle, not restraining; comforting. Clint grinned at Bucky and folded the knife into the rest of the objects, as if he'd been thrown a tennis ball. Steve wasn't sure what this was anymore -- not foolishness, or a weird kind of macho test (while _juggling)_ \-- and how the _hell_ was he going to explain this to Sam? "Go over this for me again," he could hear Sam saying, "they were _both_ tossing the knives around?"

Because Bucky had watched Clint take the throwing knife and then reached under the table, drawing his hand back out holding a much bigger knife, unsheathed it and tossed the knife and sheath at Clint in the same smooth motion, his mouth a set line. Steve was fast, and he knew he was stronger than Bucky, but Bucky was faster -- probably the only thing faster on earth was Natasha, or a cheetah. Clint was fast too. Not fast like they three were, but fast enough; he caught the knife and sheath, then threw them right back to Bucky, _one, two_ \-- and then plucked the throwing knife out of the air, tossed it over, and a _fucking wineglass_ off the table -- _three, four._ Tasha's hand stayed on Steve's arm, tightening a little, probably a warning for him to keep his trap shut, not that Steve could think of a single thing to say. He just sat there watching probably the two top marksmen in the world throw knives at each other over the remains of a perfectly good dinner and abandoned all thoughts of explaining this to Sam, because he couldn't explain to himself what was happening.

Bucky had caught the knife and sheath in either hand, but when Clint aimed the _fucking wineglass_ at him he tossed the sheath up and caught the glass, then the throwing knife, then the knife again, all balanced in the air, jerkily, not circling as smoothly as Clint's. Steve held his breath. Bucky's face was white, his eyes dark grey and enormous as he stared at Clint. He gently put the glass and knives down on the table in front of him, like they were explosives, but Clint flicked the penny at him, and then a quarter. "Nah, it's okay, you got it," Clint said easily, as if they really were friends rediscovering a long-lost skill. Bucky was just throwing stuff back at Clint, nowhere near as slick, but they were in the same rhythm. Their gazes were riveted together, neither of them watching at all the shit they were flipping around from what Steve could see, but he knew that was an illusion. "Easy as falling off a bike. Sorry, riding a log. You teach yourself?"

Next to Steve, Natasha whispered, "He showed us, in the training sessions -- they made it part of dexterity lessons, but he made us laugh. I remember."

"Yeah," Bucky said in what Steve could swear was a hypnotized tone, still staring straight at Clint. "Always was....good with my hands."

 _The Winter Soldier was_ juggling knives _and you didn't film it?_ Steve could hear Tony yelling in his head. Apparently he was never going to tell anyone else about this, ever. If they all made it through the evening. That was fine.

Clint nodded, adding in a wine _bottle_ and a couple of skewers, making Steve's heart stop. Natasha's hand moved down his arm, over his wrist to his fingers, and held them, not tight at all. The bottle, the skewers, the glasses, the silverware, the _fucking knives_ flowed back and forth between the two men like some weird energy current, as if they were directing a stream. "How old were you?" Clint asked, in a perfectly normal tone. "I think I was four, five...."

"Not that young." Bucky's voice was rough, and he cleared his throat. "Uh...I don't....goddamn library book," he said, watching the sharp edges and possible weapons coming at him ( _everything is a weapon,_ Natasha had told Steve, when he'd asked her to train him after the Battle of New York. _Even your shield)_ as if they had nothing to do with him at all. "The girls....girls were bored. Baby kept crying, so....I was eight....no. Nine. Kept dropping stuff, made them laugh."

"Girls?" Clint asked easily, adding in a remote control -- Steve thought it was the one for the stereo -- and his Starkphone. Steve felt his fingers tighten around Natasha's and tried to ease up, not wanting to crush her hand, but she squeezed back.

"Yeah," Bucky said, dazed. His sisters were facts, not people, names in his famous biography he or anyone else could look up online in less than a minute, but this sounded different. "My little sisters....Meggie, Fee....Becca, she was the baby."

"Big brother, hunh?" Clint must have been doing it for a little while, but Steve was only noticing now: the stream of objects was gradually thinning out, slowing down, as Clint picked them out of the air and laid them gently out back on the table, in a precise row, as someone must have taught him to do. He didn't look down at his hands once. "Got stuck looking after them all, right?" There were still fucking _skewers_ dancing around, though.

"Yeah....somebody had to, Ma got....overwhelmed, the other guys teased me but I didn't care....had to make sure they were okay. Them and Stevie."

"Little Stevie," Clint agreed, perfectly straight-faced, and Steve rolled his eyes. He felt, not heard, Natasha's breath stutter next to him for a moment, a silent laugh. "Becca? Not Becky?"

"She called herself that," Bucky whispered, staring straight at Clint and not seeing him, or any of them. Steve didn't know where he was. "When she was little, couldn't say it right....it just stuck. Ma said Becky and Bucky sounded too much alike, when she had to call us for supper."

That was in no history book, Steve knew. He felt it too -- the weird discovery when you remembered something you'd forgotten until then, ignorant of what you really knew. Had it always been there, submerged, waiting to be rediscovered? Tony said brains didn't work that way, and Betty had patiently explained about how scientists now thought memories were more fluid, dynamic, perpetually rewritten. But then there was this, or the moment deep in the shattered Insight carrier, or Tasha knowing a juggling man had made her and her sisters laugh. He didn't know how to explain it.

"Becca Barnes?" Clint said, something different in his voice now. He'd lined up almost everything they had been throwing (a _fucking lot,_ at this point) neatly, from biggest to smallest, metal with metal, points up. "The baby? She still around?"

Bucky glared at him, starting to come out of it, still distracted. "I don't....I don't know."

Natasha pressed Steve's hand. "She is, Buck," he said quietly, taking what he guessed was his cue. "She'd love to see you." Bucky looked sharply at him, but then had to glance back to catch a fork. "Like _this?"_ he snapped, and Steve knew if his hands weren't occupied, he'd be spreading them out in that heartbreakingly familiar gesture, palms up, as if to fully show the wreck he was now. "You're nuts." He flung the fork back at Barton, who put it down with a quiet click, the air between them still charged, although now empty.

"She'd know you," Steve said, still quiet but determined, trying not to push, letting Natasha's grip guide him the best she could. He couldn't put on an act, not like her and Barton, but that wasn't what Bucky needed from him anyway. "I knew you."

Bucky caught the knife he'd first thrown at Clint which had started it all, but kept it instead of throwing it again, idly flipping it in his metal hand, now glaring at Steve.

Steve tried again. "I saw her, Buck...just a couple of times. She misses you. She's not like Peggy." He tried to keep his voice neutral, not pleading. "She remembers you too."

Bucky's gaze changed, from anger to pain sharp as the knife he held, and he said, to Steve, "Let....let me think about it." He was pushed to the limit, Steve knew, otherwise he never asked for anything.

"Okay," he said, just as softly. "But sooner....better than later."

"I know," Bucky said, staring down now, and that was where they would have left it if it'd been the two of them, quiet and uncertain and sad, but at a resting-place. But Barton was still in the room, and he slouched down in his seat, put his hands in his pockets and swung his feet up onto the table, letting them drop loudly -- _thunk, thunk._ (In Steve's memory, Sarah Rogers winced.)

Clint said, loud and on the offense, "Yeah, well, right now, you _do_ have a choice whether you go see her, or not. But pretty soon, if you wait long enough, you won't."

Bucky stared at him, every line of his body tense. It looked as if he was one second away from going over the table after Clint and Steve felt his muscles tighten in response, felt Natasha bear down on his hand, digging her nails in. To his surprise -- which really shouldn't have been capable at all, anymore, after everything, how could they still surprise him? -- she joined in, quiet but hard, "You know I didn't see my....sisters before they died, either. I didn't get to say goodbye. Or even just let them know, I was still alive, too."

"You'll be sorry you didn't," Clint said flatly, no con or joking in his voice, stating an absolute. "For the rest of your life. Which is going to be a pretty fucking long time."

Bucky looked from Clint to Tasha and then back again, then at Steve, his face unreadable, as closed to Steve as it had been in the bad last days of their war. He said, "Stop gangin' up on me," and it was impossible for Steve not to remember it was the same tone of voice, a real warning, that Bucky had used when Steve _(Stevie)_ and his sisters had tried to nag him into something. Impossible to know if Bucky remembered that, too.

Just when it seemed the tension would snap, Clint nodded, once, slouched down further in the chair -- Steve couldn't see how he was staying in it at all -- and looked up at the ceiling, baring his throat. Natasha let go of Steve's hand and he felt the blood rush back into it as he wiggled his fingers, trying not to wince. She smiled up at him, so close Steve could see a tiny shining stripe on one cheek, the track of a dried tear. When the hell had that happened? He started to reach up to wipe it away, but caught himself.

Bucky, having apparently had enough of everything, stood up, taking a hard pack of Camels out of his pocket. He shook one loose and drew it out with his lips, and damn if Steve couldn't remember the first time he'd seen that, the electric rush of desire feeling just the same. Bucky got over to the balcony door in about two and a half steps, his stride still ridiculously long when he was upset, all _just the same_ \-- but then stopped, awkward for a moment, and shook the pack at Clint, tilting his head at the door in invitation. Clint grinned, flipped himself up in one smooth moment and was following him out, like when Sergeant Barnes had sensed his men getting anxious and upset and called a smoke break at exactly the right time. The door slammed behind them.

Steve let out his breath, then pushed it all out in one big exaggerated sigh, the way Sam had taught him, and started laughing helplessly. He looked at Natasha and saw she was laughing too. "You know, in the old soap operas," he told her, "they got amnesia, and then they remembered and everything was fine." He moved his shoulders a little; his shirt was sticking to his back, right between the shoulderblades. "What've you two got lined up for dessert, dynamite with a nitro chaser? C-4?"

Natasha kept laughing, her enjoyment at his released tension showing in her face. "Well, I thought, either he'd help or he'd blow everything up," she managed. "And either way, see, it'd work out -- "

"Jesus wept. _Jesus motherfucking Christ_ fucking _wept."_ Steve sagged back onto the cushions, throwing his arms wide along the sofa's back, barely missing Natasha's head. "Now I know how Sam feels. I don't know why he doesn't just ditch us all to go help orphans with leprosy in Cuba, or something. Only you two could show up for _dinner,_ and it turns into a -- a therapy session, with _knives."_

"Those're the best kind," Natasha said, playful back but her eyes getting a little serious. Steve looked at the bizarre still-life of his coffee table: the normal detritus from a good dinner, dirty plates and crumpled napkins and a few spills, his unfinished doodles on scrap paper and some very sharp pencils, and Clint's excruciatingly neat line of homegrown weapons laid out with surgical precision, like waiting for an operation to begin in Hell. He reached out, nudged the caviar spoon gently with his finger. "I'm a little surprised you wanted....this for dinner," he said. "I got the impression you didn't eat it a lot."

"I don't." Tasha flipped her hair back, blew out a breath, but then looked Steve in the eye again. "It brings back too much. But tonight...."

"That was kinda the point. Yeah." Steve craned his neck, trying to see what was going on out on the balcony. Clint was saying something, pointing off, then listening, but Bucky had his back to the door, probably on purpose. "What the hell are they doing out there? If he pushes Barton off the roof, you're cleaning it up."

Natasha smiled. "Clint's been thrown off lots of roofs," she said calmly. "He usually bounces."

Steve was still looking at Clint. "They would've loved him," he said softly. "The Howlies....he would've fit right in."

Natasha shrugged. "Well, we get to love him now," she said flippantly, and made Steve crack up all over again.

"What the hell does he drink? Tequila? Can I get him a case?"

Natasha shook her head, still smiling. "Everybody thinks that. He drinks it to get wasted. But he likes Laphroaig best."

"When the hell did Bucky tell you he could juggle?" Steve demanded; he could barely remember it himself.

"He didn't."

The door banged open and Steve knew if he shut his eyes, the smell of smoke and the cold breeze and sound of rough voices would be the same, as if he'd gone back in time as well as forward, but he resolutely kept them open. "....clean up the damn table so we can play cards," Bucky was saying. _" -- No,_ Steve, you ran around doing all the setting up, you can damn well sit down and take it easy." Steve sank back down, raising his hands in surrender, then slipped one arm around Natasha, who nestled under his shoulder like a kitten going to sleep. Bucky looked at Clint. "You play cards, right?"

Clint's eyes glittered. "Do I play cards? Did Hoover wear dresses?"

"He cheats," Natasha warned, without opening her eyes.

"So does Steve," Bucky retorted calmly, while Clint spluttered. "So we're even."

Steve closed his eyes too, let himself sink back as he heard them clearing the table, piling up dishes, clattering around the kitchen. _"Captain America_ cheats at cards?" Clint was asking inevitably, and Bucky replied, delighted, "Nobody told you that story? Okay, shut up and listen, it's great. We didn't even know where the hell we were at the time, when we got back I found out it was outside fucking Luxembourg, but then...."

 

After Natasha beat them all soundly three times in a row at Bullshit -- she knew it by a different name in Russian, and showed them the variant -- and Steve was beginning to think he could eat again, some time in the distant future, Clint, who was sitting on the floor against Natasha's knee, one of her legs draped over his shoulder, tipped his head upside-down and asked her: "Dessert?"

Bucky and Steve groaned, but Natasha said "Oh _yes"_ and pulled her enormous squashy leather bag flush up against the side of the chair. She rummaged around in it dramatically and drew out what looked like an ordinary shoebox, slightly bigger than usual -- Steve guessed it had held short dress boots maybe -- wrapped in sheaths of thin wrinkled plastic bags. They weren't taped closed, but the handles were knotted together at odd angles that she had to use her fingernails on. She finally lifted off the top to reveal a number of smaller newspaper-wrapped packages, carefully fitted together like puzzle pieces, none of these taped either, some with faint grease stains. Steve startled when Bucky brought back plates -- Natasha had the same magician's gift, or trick, that Clint did, of making you watch her hands while they worked. He wondered if she'd learned it from him, or....earlier.

First, there was a small crinkly parcel of thin twisted ribbons and curls and looping spirals of light crunchy deep-fried pastry, so heavily sprinkled with powdered sugar they looked white, which reminded Steve of pasta he remembered Italian tenement neighbours cooking and tasted like something he'd had in France, long ago, the memory barely there. "Angel wings -- they're called crunchies, maybe more like crispies? They're on top because it doesn't matter if they break so much." Before Bucky had managed to get half of them onto a plate, most of what was left in the wrapping paper was already gone, eaten by Clint. "I can't stop!" he said not at all apologetically, mouth full.

Next were delicate meringues, a few slightly chipped, coloured soft pink and rose, swirled like seashells. They had a strange in-between texture Steve wasn't sure if he liked -- not sticky like marshmallows, not crisp like meringue, not moist and soft but not dried-out either. He sat letting one melt in his mouth, trying to figure out the precise flavour of it -- jam or jelly, but creamy? Bucky elbowed him in the side after Steve had finished arranging the zefirs in a nice circular pattern that echoed their delicate curves while Clint was polishing off the angel wings. "Jesus, Rogers, it's _dessert,_ not the Italian Campaign. Just _taste_ it."

"I'm living in the moment," Steve protested. "Like what Bruce's books talk about."

"You're thinking, not tasting."

Natasha squashed the squabbling by bringing out a larger and flatter parcel that contained something she said was like the zefirs but which Steve liked much better: little squares that tasted almost like fancy fruit jam or candied fruit but which Natasha said were made out of pureed apples and berries with honey and egg whites. They looked like pastilles _("pastilas,"_ Bucky corrected him), but tasted more like pre-war apples than anything Steve had had in years. He had to keep putting his first one down to exclaim over it and get Bucky to agree with him that there was _nothing_ like this anymore, which made Natasha smile. Bucky smiled too.

 _"Now,_ you're tasting."

"Didn't someone say patriotism is the memory of food eaten in childhood?" Clint asked the ceiling -- he'd been banished to the floor after disgracing himelf over the crispies, and now Natasha was dropping rationed treats into his mouth. It was amusing both of them too much to be any kind of punishment. Steve looked at Natasha, who shrugged. He looked at Bucky instead.

"Lin Yutang," Bucky said after a moment, with the same fake pause Steve recognized from their schooldays, when Bucky would only volunteer an answer after a teacher had asked him, pretending to think about it for a moment, when really he'd known as soon as the question was asked. This time he was the one who shrugged at Steve. "One of the first writers in America who popularized Eastern culture, helped bring together 'East' and 'West'" -- the quote marks were in his voice, a trick Steve had never learned -- "did a lot of work with Chinese philology, stuff like that, you know."

"No, I don't know," Steve said ruefully. Natasha gave him the last few pastilas as a distraction, which he accepted. Clint asked Bucky if he'd read about Yutang's typewriter, which he'd spent all his money from his best-selling books on, and they went back and forth a little bit about machine translation, the Cold War and something called Sinology. _It figures,_ Steve thought, _they're not just asocial master sniper types, they're matching bookworms._ Bucky had gone to the movies and listened to the radio and played baseball as much as any other kid in their neighbourhood, but he'd read more than all of them put together. Part of his charm and outgoingness had been to mask his love of reading, so he wouldn't get mocked as a sissy or a grind or a know-it-all; Steve hadn't seen it at first, but he guessed Clint's brash bright facade was the same kind of armour. Steve had loved reading too, but he hadn't been allowed to do much of it when he was sick, for fear of eyestrain, and then Bucky had read to him.

Natasha broke her own last pastila in half to share, he looked so forlorn, she said.

"I'll trade you my shield for another box of these," he told her.

"No, you wouldn't."

"Oh yes he would," Bucky said. "I saw this happen with Calvados in Paris."

"Calvados in Paris made Dum-Dum cry," Steve reminded him.

"No, he cried because I wouldn't take his goddamn bowler hat for the whole bottle."

"Where the hell did you find vintage Calvados in wartime Paris anyway?"

Buried under one more layer of crumpled newspapers was what Natasha called a Kiev cake. Clint groaned when he saw her unwrap it. It was small, dense, round, brightly frosted, the sides covered with hazelnuts. Steve couldn't read Bucky's expression, but he took a plate with a neat slice -- Natasha cut it as if she were doing surgery -- and began eating when everyone else did. Under the frosting, the cake was three or four layers of buttercream, meringue, and syrups: "Cocoa cream, cognac cream, pureed apricot, caramel...." Natasha listed. After one bite Steve had to put down his fork, though he wanted to eat it as fast as he could swallow. (She complained, "Dammit, for this we should have tea -- no, not dishwater, _real_ tea." "You don't want Russian tea," Clint told Steve. "I know," Steve said, who had been given Natasha's real, Russian tea on previous visits. He looked over at Bucky, who remained inscrutable.) The cake was buttery, creamy, crunchy, the meringue crispy, the nuts soft and delicately sweet, a mixing of flavours and textures Steve had never tasted before. Bucky and Natasha split the big buttercream flower, after Steve had a bite and Clint was forbidden from claiming it whole.

They couldn't come close to finishing the cake, which Natasha said was okay; it was a gift. She went to fussily wrap it up herself in some kind of special parchment paper ("DO NOT put this in the freezer, I'll never speak to you again") and before she was back through the kitchen doorway Clint popped his head up next to the coffee table like a disembodied ghost's and said: _"Now?"_

"Sure," Natasha said, resigned. She sat down and started going through her bag big enough to stash a baby in again.

"We got you and tall, dark and gruesome a present," Clint announced.

Steve eyed the box in Natasha's hands, wrapped in a dark gold paper so low-matte and quietly lustrous it had to be very expensive. He wondered if Tony had helped her pick it out.

"Does it explode? Did you steal an obsidian flake from the Natural History museum? Did Tony Stark have anything to do with it in any way?" Bucky stared at him. "Tony gave me some stuff before you....came back," Steve said.

"Sadly, no to all of those." Natasha handed the package across the cake plates to Steve, who carefully slit the line of tape along the back with his thumbnail and handed it to Bucky. Bucky snorted, but slowly unfolded the paper, giving it back to Steve who put it on a side table so he could smooth and flatten it later; it was too beautiful not to keep. Inside was a cardboard box, unsealed, with a tucked-in flap. When Bucky untucked it, Steve saw a clean but visibly aged original Bucky Bear. Its fur was plush and smooth, the little black velvet mask stitched firmly on, the replica of Bucky's famous blue coat with the flap and double row of buttons neat and trim as if it had just come off the sewing line. If it had been mended, in any way, Steve couldn't see it. It had the faint haze of age any object that was over seventy years old would inevitably have, but physically it was almost perfect.

"I haven't seen one of these since the war," Steve said, since Bucky went on saying nothing and being completely unreadable. He held the bear lightly in both hands, the blue colour reflecting in his left one. "Where did you.... _get_ this?"

"Time machine," said Clint.

"You know Antoine Triplett, right?" Natasha asked Steve.

"Trip? Yeah, I remember -- great kid. Third generation...." Steve trailed off, thinking of Peggy's sister, and Sharon, and Morita's grandchildren.

"His mom had it," Natasha said briskly. "Her dad got one, sent it back home -- Steve had signed this note that came with it, but they lost that. His mom had it wrapped up in a special box for God knows how long, she gave it to Trip when he joined SHIELD. He was going to give it to his kids too, if he had any. Then he heard" -- her eyes flicked over to Bucky, very fast -- "and he thought you might like it. Aren't these hard to find nowadays?"

"Very rare, yeah," said Steve. He kept watching the bear in Bucky's hands; the metal one could probably shred the cherished family heirloom in seconds.

"He said if you don't want it, it's okay if you want to donate it to the Smithsonian with the rest -- "

"No!" Steve said, far more violently than he meant to, and was aware they were all watching him very carefully, even Bucky. "I'm sorry, I just....I know they mean well, but when I....I just don't want any more of our stuff in museums, okay? No. Buck, if you don't want it, we could -- donate it to charity, maybe? Hold a raffle -- "

Bucky and Natasha had locked eyes for some reason. When Natasha turned her stare on Clint instead, Bucky looked back at the bear in his hands, the lovingly well-kept fur dingy against the bright silver. He touched its black mask very gently. "Thank you," he said, almost formally, the way he and Steve had been brought up to thank people. "Both of you."

"Stark will be _so pissed_ we gave this to you and he didn't," Clint said smugly.

"Tony's collecting a whole vintage set," Natasha warned. "The bears, the comic books, the badges....he wants to give it all to Steve for his hundredth birthday."

Steve put his face in his hands. Bucky laughed.

"See, this is where being a notorious war criminal really pays dividends, Steve."

"Prisoner of war," Steve said through his hands. "Not war criminal." He lifted his head. "Where the hell are we going to keep this thing? I don't want it staring at me in the bedroom."

Bucky stood up, took a couple of strides on those long long legs Steve remembered watching him grow into, and propped it up on the mantelpiece, where it looked ridiculously, immediately at home. They almost never used the fireplace, so it would be as safe there as anywhere else in the apartment, and Steve couldn't stand the thought of it being put back in another archival storage box. He breathed out hard through his nose.

"Okay, fine. If we're gonna do this...."

He stood up and went to the storage closet in what had secretly been Bucky's room when he bought the new condo, and then _was_ Bucky's room, and was now slowly turning into a guest bedroom that sometimes saw actual guests on occasion. It wasn't there; he found it finally at the back of the closet of his own bedroom. He feinted tossing the box at Bucky across the living room, then dropped it in his lap before sitting down.

"What the hell...." The box was a little dusty, a thin layer that Bucky's fingers left visible trails in as he opened it. Inside was a brand-new twenty-first-century unwrapped Cap Bear, with a little sticker on the enclosing plastic that guaranteed _Hand-made in the U.S.A.!,_ dressed in the original bright "chorus girl" outfit complete with tights and wings.

"Tony gave it to me. Sent it to me, first week I was....here. Back. Whatever."

"And you _kept_ it?" Bucky asked, incredulous.

"It was the first thing anyone gave me, so...." Steve shrugged, suddenly feeling as self-conscious as he ever had up on a stage, in the early days. "Yeah, I kept it, all right?" He took the Cap Bear back, got it out of the wrapping a little clumsily, and then put it on the mantel next to the Bucky Bear. Bucky snorted. Too late, Steve heard Clint snap a picture with his Starkphone.

 _"Do not_ send that to -- "

"Stark's gonna shit bricks," Clint said gleefully.

Natasha leaned back, thoughtfully regarding the odd couple. "I don't know whether this is some kind of post-modern ironic statement, or so horribly sweet it makes my teeth hurt."

"No, that's the cake," Clint said.

 

After Clint and Natasha had left, not all that late in the evening, Steve and Bucky argued briefly over who was going to clean up ("You did all the setup, Steve, for God's sake _sit down")_ and Steve noticed that Natasha had left the box the desserts had been packed in on the floor, which surprised him; even a little untidiness was unlike her. When he picked it up, he groaned; there was a small rectangular package underneath it, wrapped in the same gold paper.

Bucky came in from the kitchen where he'd been methodically stacking and restacking plates in the dishwasher. He snorted a little when he saw Steve on the sofa, grimly staring at the unwrapped present in his hands. "Yeah, I was wondering if that might happen. She wouldn't give a gift to just one host."

"Is that a Russian thing?" Steve asked distractedly, not really expecting an answer. He turned the present over and over. It was compact, but heavy, somehow pleasingly so. He wondered if he could sneak it out of the building later, when Bucky was asleep. He glanced up and saw Bucky leaning against the kitchen doorway, just one shoulder propping up the wall, arms folded, grinning at him. No, probably not in this lifetime. He rapped the present lightly with his knuckles; it sounded solid, to go along with its weight. Not a book, it was a similar shape but didn't feel quite right.

"Do you want Stark to bring over one of his new bomb-sniffing robots?" Bucky asked sardonically. "I read in the _Times_ he designed a whole line for the NYPD, for free of course, but he'd probably let _you_ use one, after sending you a _bear_ and all -- "

Steve ripped the paper open, not bothering to preserve it the way he had with Bucky's gift. Natasha's present to him was a very expensive-looking red leather sketchbook with a sewn reinforced binding and thick, creamy paper, and pockets for pens and pencils of various sizes on an inside weighted leather flap that could also be used to hold down pages. He searched for a price tag, or a manufacturer's label, but of course there was no clue to who had designed it or what it had cost. It was something he never would have bought for himself, ever, not if he'd won the lottery. "I can't....use this," he said, feeling a stab of something weirdly like panic.

"Why not?" Bucky asked, watching him closely, but not unsympathetic.

"I....it costs....we can't afford...." Steve knew he wasn't making sense. He opened the sketchbook to the first page. On it Natasha had written in her slanting, elegant handwriting that was nothing like someone who had been brought up to write in Cyrillic:

 

_Yes, you can._

_You both paid for it._

Steve slammed the book closed, which made Bucky stand up straight and turned out to be a mistake, because it fell off his lap and as he grabbed at it, papers started fluttering out. Half-finished doodles on little scraps, stuff he'd tossed or thought he'd lost, sketched out on the backs of briefing memos, opened-out envelopes, crumpled paper napkins; evidence of his oldest habit, from when they never had enough money for anything, certainly not drawing paper. He could buy fancy food and enjoy fancier dessert and endure Tony nagging him about visiting his tailor to get shirts that fit properly, but he could no more change this than he could the colour of his eyes, and Tasha had seen it. He sat seething, as Bucky coaxed the sketchbook out of his grip, rescued the bits and scraps of paper and piled them neatly on the table. The ones that wound up on top were the oldest, and Steve saw sketches that went back to his first days back in New York: Tony's original tower, the first time he'd drawn Natasha's profile, the first time he'd seen again that he could draw Bucky's face from memory, in the dark probably, or if he went blind....

"I don't want her in my house again," he announced, his voice vicious, childishly draining some of the anger off that way. It was too easy to forget that Natasha's ideas of privacy and boundaries were different from anyone else's, and that she always saw information as something to use, a tool or a weapon, not something to store up or pretend to forget. "She is a _witch."_

Bucky laughed and sat down next to him, taking Steve's left hand in his right and squeezing hard. It worked a little; Steve felt his jaw easing, almost against his will. "It's half my house too, isn't it?" he asked, amused. "Can she come halfway in?"

Steve sat very still for a moment, willing himself not to tense back up again. This was, as best he could recall, the first time since he'd returned that Bucky had called anyplace _his,_ let alone his and Steve's. He didn't dare look over, not wanting to ruin the lightness of the moment, load it with too much significance. "Maybe if you're in here and I'm out in the hallway," he muttered. All of a sudden it wasn't hard to try to relax anymore; he felt almost worn out, as if he could fall asleep right here on the couch. "She's so little, I always forget she can hit harder than anyone else," he said carefully. Too late, he remembered Bucky had actually trained Tasha in combat, but maybe that wouldn't matter.

It didn't seem to. "It's all in the execution, that's what she'd say." Steve nodded; he'd heard Natasha say that herself often enough.

"I don't want to host any more dinner parties ever again," he replied morosely. "You invite the Avengers, you wind up with knife-throwing and and toy bears that are really time bombs and sketchbooks that sucker punch you in the nose and....shit."

"Too late," Bucky said cheerfully, as if they'd swapped places. "You're back in the land of the living. Movie nights, sleepovers and dangerous dinner parties _for the rest of your long life,_ Rogers."

"As long as you're there," Steve said, and then immediately wished he hadn't. But Bucky laughed again.

"I don't know if you've noticed, pal, but you kinda couldn't get rid of me if you tried."

"I did try, some," Steve protested, laughing too, but weakly, dangerously close to the edge of something else. "Not that _hard,_ but...."

"Okay, come on, Captain Rogers is about to crash and burn. You can call Talia and yell at her about invading your privacy in the morning. No, _leave it,_ Steve, the memory of our sainted mothers will forgive us if we leave crumbs on the table one fucking night. Come on, _Mishka._ Let's go to bed."

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-TWS.
> 
> There's a Victor Mature reference because it amuses me, I know he lied his way into the Coast Guard before Steve did Hollywood and I know he did _his_ [travelling bond tour](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19440701&id=Z0MxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LQ4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=3689,5487806&hl=en) after Steve was fighting, but hell, Jake, it's fanfiction.
> 
> The long poem Steve reads ("Nature is red in tooth and claw") is Tennyson's "In Memoriam"; "the boy stood on the burning deck" is from "Casabianca" (1826) by Felicia Hemans.
> 
> This is self-indulgent of me, but Maggie and Francie are named after two heroines of classic NYC street lit: _Maggie: A Girl of the Streets_ (1893) by Stephen Crane, and _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn_ (1943) by Betty Smith.
> 
> Bucky and Steve are remembering the classic British radio comedy shows _It's That Man Again_ and _The Goon Show._ Clint's vaudeville joke is based on Joseph Grimaldi, the originator of the whiteface "Joey" clown. When Steve is in the kitchen, Clint is quoting _The Manchurian Candidate_ ("His brain has not only been washed, as they say, it's been dry-cleaned"), because of course he is.
> 
> Captain America cheating at cards is a reference to owlet's awesome story ["Truth, Justice, and the Cheating Cheater Way,"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4128856) which you should go read right now, because it's amazing. 
> 
> Bucky calls Steve _Mishka_ after the mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misha


End file.
